There are basically three passions in my life: my partner Joyce, the combo food & Spain, and helping others.

I’m very lucky those three combine very well.

A year ago it wasn’t that clear to me what my passions were. I knew I liked to help others and I was doing that in the busy corporate world where as a manager you often had to take decisions that were not really ‘helping’ people at all (well, the decisions were helping some people, but not the ones I really wanted to help).

The only one born in the Netherlands from a family of Spanish immigrants, I was the only one of the three kids that always wanted to go back to Spain. I kept pushing that dream away with logic for a lot of years. Returning every couple of years to our home town in Galicia (O Carballino) was not avoided and triggered the dreaming each time over and over again.

Every time we went back and tasted the delicious food we found ourselves upon return getting slightly depressed without the good food and without the good weather.

I had a job, we were settled in The Netherlands – we kept ignoring the call.